My Top 3 Ukrainian Movies: from Zakarpattia to Kherson
Though it was a difficult time for Ukraine since 2014, the movie industry has made a big leap in its development. Along with the appearance of the excellent networks of cinemas (like Multiplex and Planeta Kino), we received beautiful movies to watch, depicting our reality in a skillful artistic way. I can't tell you about mass-produced comedies or TV series because I'm more into other kinds of movies, which stimulate fantasy and make you think about specific issues. So here are my top three Ukrainian movies of the late 2010s, telling the stories of various regions (including my homeland - Kherson) and timeframes.
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South of Ukraine, Kherson region. Photo from the movie "Volcano," 2018. |
My Thoughts Are Silent / Мої думки тихі, 2019
A beautiful road movie about the sound engineer Vadim who needs to record the sound of a rare wild duck from Zakarpattia - the westernmost part of Ukraine located in the Carpathian Mountains. It will bring him relocation to Canada, which he dreams about. On his trip, he is accompanied by his mother, who works as a taxi driver - a fantastic character played by talented Ukrainian actress Irma Vitovska.
The story begins in Kyiv, and we see Vadim living alone and trying to thrive in a big city. When he gets the new task, he goes to his hometown Uzhhorod and meets his relatives - a bunch of lovely people in their natural habitat, as we may say so. His mother treats him like a child (a typical behavior of many mothers), which causes funny moments with stunning dialogues and awkward situations.
But this movie is much more than a story about a mother-son relationship or a road trip across Zakarpattia. It is a portrait of the generation of young Ukrainians born after we gained independence in 1991 and used to work with employers from around the world, exporting our skills to the international market, whether in game dev or other industries. As Vadim says in the movie, "I export the sounds of our animals to the Western countries." The irony behind this is invaluable 🙂 Also, the story is about the parents of these young talents, who worked hard abroad in Europe to make a living...
When seeing a story like this, you never know whether it is funny or tragic. The movie leaves something in you that you bear for a while trying to understand, something about the reality we live in where family relationships and social phenomena are chaotically intertwined, and you may have plans that don't make sense at all in this hurricane of circumstances we call "life."
Since I find the Ukrainian version of this movie's trailer more funny and appealing than the international one, I want to share it with you too, and I hope that auto-generated subs will help you understand it.
Volcano / Вулкан, 2018
The story happens in the Kherson region - the left bank of the Dnipro River. The translator, who worked with OSCE mission in the region, gets lost and doesn't want to be found. He meets an extravagant person who shares his business ideas with him and shows him how to survive in this land of endless plains.
This movie is more about exploring the region's specifics with its funny, tragic, and absurd moments which look strange for a main character who came from Kyiv. But this land's charm doesn't let him go. Planning to stay for one night, he stayed for some time, which brought him this experience of diving into the life of the Ukrainian South.
In one episode, you can see a village under the water, which resulted from the building of the Kakhovka Reservoir in 1956, and that problem became relevant today when Russia destroyed the dam in 2023, and many of the Ukrainian villages were flooded again. None of the movies can show how much suffering this land has experienced...
Beautifully shot, this movie shows the region where I was born, called the "wild field" in the Cossack times, and remains the same today, experiencing the new war.
Toloka / Толока, 2020
"Toloka" show the most entire picture of the last 400 years of our country's history, but painted in a beautiful arthouse way. The synopsis says the plot is based on Taras Shevchenko's poem "Kateryna" (the fantastic work actually), but you can't find that story in the movie. It is rather a tragical kaleidoscope of historical events, combined with the same main character, her house, and the process that gives its name to the movie, "toloka"- the traditional mutual assistance in villages to perform urgent work requiring many workers, such as building houses.
"We are very patient. It's the toloka that got us used to it. If a neighbor burns down our house, we will dig up the clay, gather a toloka - let it burn again, right? He is going to run out of matches at some point, isn't he?"
There are true events shown in the movie, like the Cossack times and the Great Nothern War, the Soviet period, the building of the Kakhovka dam, and the occupation of Crimea in 2014. Pictured with humor in a magnificent, mysterious way, the movie brings you to the world of cruel events storming Ukraine in the past 400 years - the unbearable weight that only love and support can help with. And this is what toloka (as a practice) is about - supporting each other in hard times.
This movie is like poetry: understanding is not enough. You need to feel it. I would call this movie our Ukrainian "one hundred years of solitude," but with a longer period with no end.
Every time the Ukrainian house is rebuilt, we use the same clay material, which is easy to ruin again. So maybe, we should find new, stronger materials, that stone to help us stand in the storm of historical events, that will not let our neighbor cannot destroy our home anymore? And we wouldn't need any toloka in future.
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